UC-NRLF 


/BERKEIE/ 

i  LiBRfAlY 

I     UNIVERSITY  OF 
\CAUFORNIA 


HUGH 

w. 

DEWES 


POEfl 


LONI 
LOW, 

(UMITED) 

JT.  DUNJTAN'6  HOUJE 

LANE,  FLEET  Jr.,  E.  c. 
1694 


C2 


THE    •     RIVERSIDE     •     PRESS 
CAMBRIDGE  •   MASS   •   U  -   S  •  A 
ELECTROTYPED  •  AND  •  PRINTED 

BY • H • O • HOUGHTON •  &  •  CO 


332 


'  r        ^~/ 


"  That  he  had  a  roman  nose, 
And  his  cheek  was  like  a  rose 

In  the  snow  "...      Frontispiece. 

Preface i,  2 

The  Last  Leaf         .         .        .        .        .        .        6 

The  Last  Leaf,  continued          ....     7 

The  Last  Leaf,  concluded       ....         8 

Half-Title 

"  /  saw  him  once  before, 
As  he  passed  by  the  door"       .       to  face  page  10 

"  They  say  that  in  his  prime, 
Ere  the  priming-knife  of  Time 

Cut  him  down, 
Not  a  better  man  was  found'1'1        .         to  face  12 

" By  the  Crier  on  his  round"       .         .     to  face  14 
"  Through  the  town  "         .         .         .         to  face  i 6 


IWTMTPNJ 

—~       N^_ 


"  But  now  he  -walks  the  streets  "  .    to  face  page  18 


"  The  streets  " to  face  20 

"  The  mossy  marbles  rest "  .        .  .to  face  22 

"  The  lips  that  he  has  f  rest"    .         .  to  face  24 

"  In  their  bloom  "  .         .         .         .  .to  face  26 

"  And  the  names  he  loved  to  hear 
Have  been  carved  for  many  a  year 

On  the  tomb  "...  to  face  28 

"  On  the  tomb"      .-        .        ,        .  .     to  face  30 

"  My  grandmamma  has  said, 
Poor  old  lady,  she  is  dead 

Long  ago  "     ....  to  face  32 

"  Like  a  rose  in  the  snow  "   .         .  .to  face  34 

"  In  the  snow  " to  face  36 


J 


"  But  now  his  nose  is  thin, 
And  it  rests  upon  his  chin 
Like  a  staff"    . 

"  The  old  three-cornered  hat 
And  the  breeches  and  all  that 
Are  so  queer  " 

"  If  I  should  live  to  be 
The  last  leaf  itpon  the  tree 
In  the  spring"     '    . 

"  The  last  leaf  upon  the  tree  "  . 

"  In  the  spring  "  . 

"  The  old  forsaken  bough  " 

The  End        . 

History  of  the  poem          .        . 

History  of  the  poem,  continued 

History  of  the  poem,  concluded 


I  SAW  him  once  before 
As  he  passed  by  the  door, 

•  And  again 

The  pavement  stones  resound 
As  he  totters  o'er  the  ground 
With  his  cane. 


They  say  that  in  his  prime, 
Ere  the  pruning-knife  of  Time 

Cut  him  down, 
Not  a  better  man  was  found 
By  the  crier  on  his  round 

Through  the  town. 

But  now  he  walks  the  streets, 
And  he  looks  at  all  he  meets, 

Sad  and  wan, 

And  he  shakes  his  feeble  head 
That  it  seems  as  if  he  said 

"  They  are  gone  !  " 


/  7 


w^ 

~  Continued 


The  mossy  marbles  rest 
j  On  the  lips  that  he  has  prest 

In  their  bloom, 

And  the  names  he  loved  to  hear 
Have  been  carved  for  many  a  year 

On  the  tomb. 

My  grandmamma  has  said  — 
Poor  old  lady,  she  is  dead 

Long  ago,  — 
That  he  had  a  Roman  nose; 
And  his  cheek  was  like  a  rose 
In  the  snow. 

But  now  his  nose  is  thin, 
And  it  rests  upon  his  chin 

Like  a  staff, 

And  a  crook  is  in  his  back, 
And  a  melancholy  crack 

In  his  laugh. 


For  me  to  sit  and  grin 

At  him  here. 

the  old  three-cornered  hat 
And  the  breeches,  and  all  that 

Are  so  queer ! 

And  if  I  should  live  to  be 
The  last  leaf  upon  the  tree 

In  the  Spring, 
Let  them  smile  as  I  do  now 
At  the  old  forsaken  bough 

Where  I  cling. 


W 


1\'- 


10 


cfi    t 


JM     ""•         •          •!      <V7 

•&*•'"-'  %'      '.^/X 


been. 
O]l  (lie 


e/  30 


_ 


&t  n°v  Ivf  n°lW  chin 


^K^p 


' 

N       \^ 


Tnc 
CND 


THE    HISTORY   OF   THIS   POEM 


MY  publishers  tell  me  that  it  would  add 
to  the  interest  of  the  Poem  if  I  would  men 
tion  any  circumstances  connected  with 
composition,  publication,  and  reception.     This 
request  must  be  the  excuse  of  my  communicative 
ness.   Just  when  it  was  written  1  cannot  exactly  say, 
nor  in  what  paper  or  periodical  it  was  first  published. 
It  must  have  been  written  before  April,  1833  ;  probably 
in  1831  or  18^2.    It  was  republished  in  the  first  edition 
of  my  poems'",  in  the  year  1836. 

The  Poem  was  suggested  by  the  sight  of  a  figure  well 

known  to  Bostonians  of  the  years  just  mentioned,  that 

of  Major  Thomas  Melville,  "  the  last  of  the  cocked 

hats,"  as  he  was  sometimes  called.     The  Major  had 

been  a  personable  young  man,  very  evidently,  and 

retained  evidence  of  it  in 

"  The  monumental  pomp  of  age,''  — 
which   had  something  imposing  and  something  odd 


about  it  for  youthful  eyes  like  mine, 
pointed  at  as  one  of  the  "  Indians  " 


He  was  often 
of  the  famous 

"  Boston  Tea-Party  "  of  1774.  His  aspect  among  the 
crowds  of  a  later  generation  reminded  me  of  a  with 
ered  leaf  which  has  held  to  its  stem  through  the 
storms  of  autumn  and  winter,  and  finds  itself  still 
clinging  to  its  bough  while  the  new  growths  of  spring 
are  bursting  their  buds  and  spreading  their  foliage  all 
around  it.  I  make  this  explanation  for  the  benefit  of 
those  who  have  been  puzzled  by  the  lines 

The  last  leaf  upon  the  tree 
In  the  Spring, 

The  way  in  which  it  came  to  be 
written  in  a  somewhat  singular  meas- 
re  was  this.     I  had  become  a  little 
known  as  a  versifier,  and  I  thought  that  one  or 


M\\ 

si 


two  other  young  writers  were  following  my 
efforts  with  imitations,  not  meant  as  paro 
dies  and  hardly  to  be  considered  improve 
ments  on  their  models.  I  determined  to 
write  in  a  measure  which  would  at  once  betray 
any  copyist.  So  far  as  it  was  suggested  by  any 
previous  poem,  the  echo  must  have  come  from 
Campbell's  "  Battle  of  the  Baltic,"  with  its  short 
terminal  lines,  such  as  the  last  of  these  two, 

By  thy  wild  and  stormy  steep, 
Elsinore. 


But  1  do  not  remember  any  poem  in  the  same  measure, 
except  such  as  have  been  written  since  its  pub 
lication. 

The  Poem  as  first  written  had  one  of  those  false 
rhymes  which  produce  a  shudder  in  all  educated 
persons,  even  in  the  Poems  of  Keats  and  others 
who  ought  to  have  known  better  than  to  admit  them. 
The  guilty  verse  ran  thus  :  — 

But  now  he  walks  the  streets 
.    And  he  looks  at  all  he  meets 

So  forlorn, 

And  lie  shakes  his  feeble  head 
That  it  seems  as  if  lie  said 

"  They  are  gone  !  " 

A  little  more  experience,  to  say  nothing  of  the  sneer 
of  an  American  critic  in  an  English  periodical,  showed 
me  that  this  would  never  do.  Here  was  what  is  called 
a  ';  cockney  rhyme,"  —  one  in  which  the  sound  of  the 
letter  r  is  neglected.  —  maltreated  as  the  letter  k  is 
insulted  by  the  average  Briton  by  leaving  it  out  every 
where  except  where  it  should  be  silent.  Such  an  ill- 
mated  pair  as  "  forlorn  "  and  "  gone  "  could  not  pos 
sibly  pass  current  in  good  rhyming  society.  But  what 
to  do  about  it  was  the  question.  1  must  keep 

"  They  are  gone  !  " 
^\  and  I  could  not  think  of  any  rhyme  which  I  could 


work  in  satisfactorily.  In  this  perplexity 
my  friend,  Mrs.  Folsom,  wife  of  that  excel 
lent  scholar,  Mr.  Charles  Folsom,  then  and 
for  a  long  time  the  unsparing  and  infallible 

corrector  of  the  press  at  Cambridge,  suggested 

the  line 

"  Sad  and  wan," 

which  I  thankfully  adopted  and  have  always  re 
tained. 

The   Poem   has    been   occasionally   imitated, 
often  reprinted,  and  not  rarely  spoken  well  of.     I  hope 
I  shall  be  forgiven  for  mentioning  three  tributes 
which  have  been  especially  noteworthy  in  my 
own  remembrance. 

Good  Abraham  Lincoln  had  a  great  liking  for 
it,  and  repeated  it  from  memory  to  Governor  An 
drew,  as  the  Governor  himself  told  me. 

1  have  a  copy  of  it  made  by  the  hand  of  Edgar  Allan 
Poe,  with  an  introductory  remark  which  I  will  quote 
in  connection  with  the  one  which  precedes  it. 

"If  we  regard  at  the  same  time  accuracy,  rhythm, 
melody,  and  invention,  or  novel  combination  of  metre, 
I  should  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  a  young  and 
true  poetess  of  Kentucky,  Mrs.  Amelia  Welby,  has 
done  more  in  the  way  of  really  good  verse  than  any 
individual  among  us.  I  shall  be  pardoned,  neverthe 
less,  for  quoting  and  commenting  upon  an  excellently 
well  conceived  and  well  managed  specimen  of  versifi 
cation,  which  will  aid  in  developing  some  of  the  prop 
ositions  already  expressed.  It  is  the  '  Last  Leaf '  of 
Oliver  W.  Holmes." 

Then  follows  the  whole  poem  carefully  copied  in  the 
well-known    delicate   hand  of   the    famous    poet   and 
critic.     The  roll  of  manuscript  nearly  five  feet  long 
closes  with  this  poem,  so  that  the  promised  comment  is 
The  manuscript  was  given  me  by  the  late  Mr. 


Robert  Carter,  a  former  collaborator  with  Mr. 
James  Russell  Lowell,  one  of  Foe's  biographers. 
Poe  was  not  always  over  civil  in  speaking  of 
New  England  poets.  To  such  as  were  sensi 
tive  to  his  vitriolic  criticism,  his  toleration  was 
tranquillizing,  and  his  praise  encouraging. 
Fifty  years  ago  those  few  words  of  his  would 
have  pleased  me  if  they  had  been  published, 
which  they  never  were.  But  the  morning  dew 
means  little  to  the  withered  leaf. 

The  last  pleasant  tribute  antecedent  to  this 
volume  of  illustrations,  of  which  it  is  not  for 
me  to  speak,  is  the  printing  of  the  poem,  among 
others,  in  raised  letters  for  the  use  of  the  blind. 

Reminiscences  —  idle,  perhaps,  to  a  new  gen 
eration.  It  is  all  right ;  if  these  egotisms  amuse 
them  they  amuse  me,  too,  as  I  look  them  over ; 
and  so 

Let  them  smile  as  I  do  now 

At  the  old  forsaken  bough 

Where  1  cling. 

OLIVER    WENDELL    HOLMES. 
BEVEULY  FARMS,  July  ()th,  1885. 


YC185314 


